Larry Craig

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Rural Health Training Incentive Act. I am pleased that Senators Patty Murray, Conrad Burns, Mike Crapo and Frank Murkowski are joining with me in this effort today. We are all aware there is a nationwide shortage of health practitioners in rural America and that this shortage is affecting the availability of health care in those communities. This trend is aggravated by the upcoming retirement of 77 million baby-boomers and the overall aging of the rural populations. Unfortunately, there is no quick fix for the problem, and the solution will require a long-term investment in human resources. The bill that I am introducing today would begin work on this long-term investment through the regional Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho, WWAMI, program. The WWAMI program has an excellent track record in its 30 year history of designing programs that work. It has a regionally focused medical school with a mission to train physicians for the communities in Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho. With 27 percent of the land mass of the Nation and only 3.3 percent of its population it is truly a ready made laboratory for exploring the best ways to recruit and train rural health care professionals. This legislation seeks to expand upon the existing WWAMI programs for the recruitment and training of all health care professionals in the five state rural settings and to develop and evaluate similar programs that could be used in other regions of the country. This legislation would be a step in preparing our young people to go into the medical professions and, importantly, would encourage them to practice in rural communities. I am pleased to be able to introduce this legislation as part of an overall strategy to stabilize health care in rural communities. This session, I have introduced legislation that would provide rural health care facilities with much needed capital to build new or repair existing infrastructure and to purchase medical equipment to help them keep pace with changing technologies. I am also pleased to have worked with my colleague Senator Harkin on two separate pieces of legislation that would provide Medicare equity to both providers and seniors in rural States. The bill that I am introducing today adds an integral element of this strategy by making sure that health professionals are available to serve in rural areas. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, today I introduce this bill, Spirit Lake and Twin Lakes Omitted Lands Act of 2002 to help resolve a land ownership problem that affects over 400 private property owners and homeowners located around Spirit Lake and Twin Lakes in Kootenai County, ID. In 1880, a public land survey prepared under contract with the General Land Office, grossly misrepresented portions of the actual lakeshore of the two lakes. The surveys show the meander lines along the lakes up to one-half mile away from their actual location. The errors were not discovered until recently. Over the years, the shorelines of these popular lakes have become heavily developed and property owners have purchased their property and held it in good faith ownership. Most of the property owners affected by this situation have a chain of title that goes back over 100 years. Due to the inaccuracy of the original government survey, county officials have expressed concern regarding their inability to approve and regulate new developments, surveys, permits, etc. The Bureau of Land Management, the responsible Federal agency, has determined that it has no interest in the affected land and wishes only to remove the cloud on the titles. Under current federal law the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) would be required to conduct a resurvey to properly describe the land. Much of this land would then become ``omitted land'' and would revert to federal ownership. Landowners who already paid fair market value for the land would then have to re-purchase it, along with paying a $50 application fee, and paying for the appraisal, survey, and conveyance costs. Obviously, this is not an acceptable solution and does not provide the most equitable benefit to the public, so Senator Crapo and I are introducing this legislation. A companion bill is being offered in the House of Representatives by Mr. Otter. This legislation will authorize funds for the BLM to resurvey the land and direct the BLM to issue disclaimers of interest to all of the affected property owners. This is the only acceptable solution and one that keeps the landowners whole. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, today I introduce this bill, Spirit Lake and Twin Lakes Omitted Lands Act of 2002 to help resolve a land ownership problem that affects over 400 private property owners and homeowners located around Spirit Lake and Twin Lakes in Kootenai County, ID. In 1880, a public land survey prepared under contract with the General Land Office, grossly misrepresented portions of the actual lakeshore of the two lakes. The surveys show the meander lines along the lakes up to one-half mile away from their actual location. The errors were not discovered until recently. Over the years, the shorelines of these popular lakes have become heavily developed and property owners have purchased their property and held it in good faith ownership. Most of the property owners affected by this situation have a chain of title that goes back over 100 years. Due to the inaccuracy of the original government survey, county officials have expressed concern regarding their inability to approve and regulate new developments, surveys, permits, etc. The Bureau of Land Management, the responsible Federal agency, has determined that it has no interest in the affected land and wishes only to remove the cloud on the titles. Under current federal law the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) would be required to conduct a resurvey to properly describe the land. Much of this land would then become ``omitted land'' and would revert to federal ownership. Landowners who already paid fair market value for the land would then have to re-purchase it, along with paying a $50 application fee, and paying for the appraisal, survey, and conveyance costs. Obviously, this is not an acceptable solution and does not provide the most equitable benefit to the public, so Senator Crapo and I are introducing this legislation. A companion bill is being offered in the House of Representatives by Mr. Otter. This legislation will authorize funds for the BLM to resurvey the land and direct the BLM to issue disclaimers of interest to all of the affected property owners. This is the only acceptable solution and one that keeps the landowners whole. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I understand we have one more speaker on our side who is on the way to the floor. I guess there are about 5 minutes remaining.

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum, and I ask unanimous consent that the time be equally charged.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, today we celebrate May as National Foster Care Month, and in Idaho, Foster Care Appreciation Month. Although this month is almost over, the need for foster care remains critical. I would like to take a moment today to talk about the important role that foster parents play in maintaining the safety and welfare of some of our most vulnerable citizens. According to the Administration of Children and Families within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, there are an estimated 565,000 children in foster care across this nation. In Idaho, 1,276 children in need have been given temporary refuge in foster homes. There are 470 licensed foster homes available in Idaho to provide a family setting for children who have lost their parents, or whose parents, for whatever reasons, can no longer provide appropriate care. Foster care is intended to be temporary--until a child can be returned safely to his or her parents, or, if that is impossible, placed in a permanent, loving adoptive home. Many foster parents take an active role working with the child's family to help them become safely reunited, or end up adopting the child themselves. One such foster couple is Manual and Catalina Godina of Parma. The Godinas have been foster parents since 1999, caring for nearly 20 children of all ages. After her five biological children grew up and married, Catalina spent her days babysitting grandchildren. She heard a foster care recruitment announcement on the radio and told Manuel she wanted to get involved. She then applied to see if they could qualify and, fortunately, they did. Catalina has seen first hand the need for foster care when her infant nephew was removed from a drug-abusive home to be placed in his grandmother's care. She wanted to do something to help kids, so she opened up the Godina home to them. Catalina knows many kids who come through the system are mistreated, and she's trying to do her part to bring some joy into their lives. ``They need some love, caring and a lot of attention,'' she says. Manual and Catalina have hosted children for as little as 2 weeks, but currently their foster family includes a teenager who has lived with them for 3 years. On May 9, the Godinas adopted 3-year old Dimber, a beautiful boy who's been in their lives since he was 9 days old. They fell in love with Dimber, and when he became available for adoption, the Godinas applied, ensuring him a permanent, loving home. There are many more foster families who mirror the compassion and love expressed by the Godinas. Sadly, however, there are far more children needing temporary refuge than there are Godinas or other foster families who can care for them. The purpose of National Foster Care Month has been to raise awareness of these issues and invite caring adults across the Nation to consider helping a child in need by becoming a foster parent. I salute all foster families and urge my colleagues to continue spreading this message in their home States.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. The world was a bustling time in 1922: the tomb of King Tutankhamen was unearthed, Benito Mussolini was granted temporary dictatorial powers in Italy, James Joyce's Ulysses was published, insulin was isolated leading to the first successful treatment for diabetes, and the Lincoln Memorial here in Washington, DC, was opened to the public. It also marked the year that a very special lady was born. Her name is Sylvia Factor. I want to take this opportunity to recognize Sylvia on the occasion of her 80th birthday on May 17. I have met Sylvia and can say without hesitation she is a truly exceptional woman. She has witnessed a lot in her lifetime and is living proof the American dream can come true. A first-generation American, her parents immigrated to this country from Eastern Europe in the hopes of making a better life for their family. Sylvia grew up in Wilkes Barre, PA, and the Bronx, NY, and was swept up into the war effort as a young woman. During World War II she answered the call to support her country like so many other ``Rosies,'' by helping manufacture the Corsair airplane for the United States Marines at Chance Vought. She later supported her family by working at Columbia Records in Bridgeport, CT, and then 28 years at Raybestos- Manhattan in Stratford, CT. Today, she is still an active member of her community, using her retirement years to contribute to the well-being of others in many forms. Sylvia volunteers at the Jewish Home for the Elderly in Fairfield, CT, and the Jewish Family Services of Bridgeport. She sets the kind of example President Bush was seeking in his call for all citizens to volunteer in their communities, and it is an example worth following. She also enjoys visiting with her friends and family, including her son Mallory, daughter-in-law Elizabeth and grandchildren: India, Mallory III, and Cailley Factor. Today I congratulate Sylvia for all she has done, and continues to do, for her country and community. I only hope that I can be as active and vibrant as she is when I reach 80. I wish her a heartfelt happy birthday, with many more to follow.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. I thank the Senator from Minnesota. The point is well taken. I yield the floor. Mr. DORGAN addressed the Chair.

Mr. CRAIG. Yes, I am happy to yield.

Mr. CRAIG. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I have listened intently to my colleague, the senior Senator from Texas. The reason I do that and I have done that for a good many years, I always learn a great deal. I am always extremely cautious to get on the floor and debate in opposition to a position held by my colleague from Texas, with his skill but, most importantly, his knowledge in this area. It is very important. I hope all listen. I was taking notes as if I were a student at Texas A&M and he were the economics professor. In fact, that is what we heard today, a rather professorial statement about the ideals of trade in an ideal environment. I disagree not with that statement. I also agree with the historical perspective that he offered from the 1960s through the 1970s and the Kennedy Round and the circumstances the world found itself in and the need for us to change from being the exclusive holder in a constitutional Republic of the right to determine international commerce flows to one where we delegated that thought by law to the executive, in a great more detail. That, of course, is what we did with fast track. That was the 1960s and the 1970s. Through that period of the 1970s and the 1980s and the 1990s, the world changed a great deal--really all for our betterment in the broad sense. As economies changed and we invested in world economies, there is no question that the economic engine of the United States drove the world and took a lot of poor countries and made them more prosperous. Part of it was because we allowed access to our markets while at the same time we promoted their markets and invested in their countries. All of that is true, and it will be every bit as true tomorrow and a decade or two from now as it was then. I don't disagree with that. What I am suggesting is in the year 2002, as we once again search for a way to promote trade, we take a nearly 40-year-old model and say it works, it fits, it is the right thing to do again. Is it the right thing for us to--almost in an exclusive way--delegate full authority to the executive branch in an area that is constitutionally ours? I believe it is. I believe it is with certain conditions that are very limited and very direct. I don't believe they change the dynamics of a relationship and ultimately a negotiation. It is very difficult to blend a parliamentary government's negotiators and what they understand their role is with that of a constitutional Republic. I know; I have been there. I have seen the frustration of the European parliamentarian who cannot understand why the President's men or women cannot speak for the United States and cut a deal and confirm it and that is the way it will be if the President signs off on it. The reason they can't is because of us and because of a little item we call the Constitution. While we have delegated that authority by law, we have also said it has to come back here on an up-or-down vote. What Senator Dayton and I do is go a slight step further and say that in those areas that are fixed by law, law that we created, you have to come back to us. And not under this sweeping environment and nostalgia and euphoria of a trade package that is going to spin the world into greater economies are we going to pick apart an agreement. What we are saying is simply this. We are saying that you, Mr. President, and your team must come back as advocates and sales men and women. As you sell the whole package, you have to sell a few of the parts. I hope, ultimately, when we see a conference report, it has a 90-day notification in it that sets the Congress to task in the sense that it notifies it that they will be making some change in current law and we are preparing ourselves, we are looking at it, we are making decisions, and the President's men and women are here on the Hill advocating and saying: It is a quid pro quo: For a reduction here, we get this here; for a reduction in our subsidies in agriculture, the Europeans are going to reduce their subsidies, they are going to take away some of their hidden barriers, and we are going to have greater access to markets. I think that would sell here in the Senate. I think it would work. I think you could find 50 plus 1 who would support that. But you have to sell it. We have delegated the authority of negotiation, but we have not delegated the authority and the conditions of final passage. That alone is ours under the Constitution. That is why this is an important debate and, while it may change the character from the historic perspective of fast track, I do not believe it neuters, I do not believe it nullifies, I do not believe it causes our negotiators more encumbrance as they sit down at the table. That is because right upfront the terms are understood. It does not deny them the right to negotiate anything. Everything is on the table. What it does say to the executive branch of Government is: Come home and sell your product. Come home and convince Congress you have done the right thing and here are all the tradeoffs and the alternatives. Because on the whole Congress agrees with the Senator from Texas: Trade for the whole of our economy and for job creation is very important. Earlier in the day when I was debating the initial Dayton-Craig amendment as offered, I talked about Idaho's economy. We have to have trade. I know we have to have trade. I am going to work to get trade. But I want to tell the Senator from Texas that a good number of years ago a young man from Texas came to Idaho. He had been from Idaho originally but was working in Texas at a company called Texas Instruments, a little old high-tech company that became a big old powerful, important, and valuable high-tech company. He came home to Idaho, and he convinced a group of investors to go with him and his brother because they had a better idea about how to build memory chips. They got a group of investors together, and they built a fab, and they started producing memory chips--late 1980s, early 1990s. They were doing a great job building a DRAM memory chip, selling it to the world, and then all of a sudden came the Japanese aggressively into the market, deciding they wanted the market, they were going to control the market. They had built great fab--or fabrication capacity--and they were dumping in our markets. And down went that little company in Idaho. They came to me and others from Idaho. We went to a President--George Bush--and said: President Bush, if you do not help us, this little company is going to be destroyed and we are going to lose all of our memory chip capacity in this country. There were futurists saying this was the loss of the new intelligentsia, of the U.S. economy, and if we lost this and gave it away to the Japanese, we would never have this new economy. The then-President Bush stepped in and said: You are right, and he stuck an antidumping clause against the Japanese--backed them off. At that little fledgling company in Idaho, the lights went back on, they began to produce chips again. Now they are an organization known as Micron. They employ 30,000-plus people. They produce 40 percent of the memory chips of the world. They are Idaho's major employer. And they are in other States. They just bought a fab in Virginia. But for a moment in time, the President of the United States used antidumping provisions and stopped the Japanese and, in part, shifted the world. From that moment through the decade of the 1990s, until today, this country has led in the area of new technologies. It truly was the economy of the 1990s, in part--a small part but an important part--because we helped shape a marketplace and we disallowed government-sponsored, government-supported manufacturers in other countries from dumping in the world market and, most importantly, in our market. That is why these tools are important. If they are negotiated away, then it is phenomenally important for this Congress to speak to it. Nowhere do we say they cannot be brought to the table. Nowhere does the Dayton-Craig amendment say they cannot be negotiated. It simply says to the negotiators, our negotiators: You have a job to do. You have a very important job to do, and that is to sell it. And the same logic that sells the whole trade package, 50-plus-1 votes here in this body, blocks a point of order on any changes in trade law. That seems to be reasonable. That seems to be common sense. We can go through all the provisions, and the Senator from Texas did that and expanded on them and talked about intellectual property and copyrights. People come to the United States for the purpose of inventing so they can own a piece of their invention and profit by it. That is why we have had copyright law. That is why we have led the world and why we lead the world today in inventions, in new technologies, largely because those who create--those who create through thinking, and that materializes in the form of a useable object in the market, in the laboratory, in the manufacturing unit--can profit by that for a period of time. We protect them. Yes, we will negotiate those items. But what we will not do is negotiate ours away. We are going to try to make the world a transparent place. I am amazed that as the world shifted from tariff to antidumping, countervailing kinds of trade remedy laws, as is being argued here today, we would want to back ours off. I understand trading. I understand quid pro quo: You do this and we will do this. But what you do must be transparent, what you do must be enforceable, because what we do as a representative republic, by the very character of our country and the character of our laws, is open. It is done in the public eye. It is done in the arena of the international trade debates. At the Commission downtown--I have been there to testify; so has the Presiding Officer--we have talked about trade issues. We have talked about agricultural policy. We have argued before the Commissioners to make sure that the findings are correct and they are right. We have been there on Canadian-related issues. The only reason we are allowed to go is that we have the law so that ultimately, if wrongdoing is found, if dumping is found, there is a remedy. That remedy usually allows us to cause the other country to comply, to come into balance with us. That is what is important here, isn't it? That is what helps our farmers. It doesn't protect them, it helps them. It allows competition in a fair market. It doesn't protect and isolate our manufacturing jobs. It balances it. We hope it makes them competitive. We had a vote just a few moments ago, and 60 Senators at least disagreed with the motion to table the Dayton-Craig amendment. Here is probably the reason. Let me read this for the record, and then I will step down because others are here to debate. During the Doha Round of the WTO in Qatar last year, we know our trade ambassador largely believed he was forced to put on the table, as a negotiable item, our trade remedy provisions. We in the Senate were concerned about that. On May 7 of last year, here is what we said: Dear Mr. President: We are writing to state our strong opposition to any international trade agreement that would weaken U.S. trade laws. Key U.S. trade laws, including antidumping law, countervailing duty law, Section 201, and Section 301, are a critical element of U.S. trade policy. A wide range of agricultural and industrial sectors has successfully employed these statutes to address trade problems. Unfortunately, experience suggests that many other industries are likely to have occasion to rely upon them in future years. Why? Because of a changing, growing, maturing world economy there will be competitors out there. Let's make sure they are fair. Each of these laws is fully consistent with U.S. obligations under the World Trade Organization and other trade agreements. Let me repeat: Each of these laws is consistent with U.S. obligations under the World Trade Organization and other trade agreements. Moreover, these laws actually promote free trade by countering practices that both distort trade and are condemned by international trading rules. U.S. trade laws provide American workers and industries the guarantee that, if the United States pursues trade liberalization, it will also protect them against unfair foreign trade practices and allow time for them to address serious import surges. They are part of a political bargain struck with Congress and the American people under which the United States has pursued market opening trade agreements in the past. Congress has made clear its position on this matter. In draft fast track legislation considered in 1997, both Houses of Congress have included strong provisions directing trade negotiators not to weaken U.S. trade laws. Some of those provisions are in the current document here on the floor to which we are offering an amendment. Congress has restated this position in resolutions, letters, and through other means. Unfortunately, some of our trading partners, many of whom maintain serious unfair trade practices, continue to seek to weaken these laws. This may simply be posturing by those who oppose future market opening, but--whatever the motive--the United States should no longer use its trade laws as bargaining chips in trade negotiations nor agree to any provisions that weaken or undermines U.S. trade laws. We look forward to your response. Sincerely-- And it is signed by 62 Members of the Congress, Democrat and Republican alike. What we are offering today in the Dayton-Craig amendment is fully consistent with the letter we sent to the President last May 7. The vote we had an hour or so ago to table the Dayton-Craig amendment is almost to the vote similar to this letter. In other words, I do not believe the Senate has changed its mind. I think the President has a very clear message. But what is most important is not our President. We want him to negotiate. We want him to put the items on the table. We want him to engage the world. We want to trade. We want our producers to produce for a world market. What we do not want is an agreement struck that is impossible to take. What we do want is for the rest of the world to know that we will, in some ways, protect and provide for the American, the U.S. economy in a way that allows us to prosper while allowing other countries entry into our economy, and we hope they will allow us into theirs, and in fair, balanced, and equitable processes. That is what is at issue. I believe that is the essence of the debate. Idealism has its place. Academic arguments are critically important. But today we talk about the practical application of the law and our constitutional responsibility, and the impact it has on my farmers and my ranchers and my working men and women, who, like me, believe they have to trade in a world market to stay economically alive. I yield the floor.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, as a cosponsor of the Dayton-Craig amendment, I wish to speak for a few moments about the constructs of the amendment itself and applaud my colleague and partner in this amendment, the Senator from Minnesota, for a very thorough and well- thought-out explanation as to the reason for this amendment. I need not repeat the statistics. I need not repeat the facts that have been so eloquently spoken about a problem that exists in our country today that begs for a remedy and, at the same time, demands that we move forward in the area of expanding trade amongst our trading partners around the world. The elements of fairness, the elements of transparency, the elements of the right hand knowing what the left hand is doing are absolutely critical in any trade relationship. By the character of a developing economy, by the uniqueness of a resource-directed economy, by the uniqueness of a populated economy, all of our countries around the world have differences. And those differences have values. And those countries that sense those values work to protect them or in some way assure that they will not be traded down or effectively destroyed by the very governments that are destined to protect them. As a result of that, from the very beginning, and from the beginning of the debate over trade, very substantively coming with the Kennedy Round of trade years ago, when we first established the fast-track concept, we knew our trade negotiators, once they were at the table of international negotiations, would have to have flexibility to propose and bring back to the Congress a whole package. But that whole package had to be representative of the laws of the country of which they were diplomats. We have struggled with that over the years. Congress has consistently passed fast tracks, and we have worked to move progressively and to liberalize our trade laws. We, the United States, have been the world's promoters of trade. It is quite simple why we would want to be that. In my State of Idaho, nearly a third of every acre planted of agricultural produce has to sell in world markets to maintain some degree of value in a domestic market. My State was built on potatoes, potato chips. Now it is being built on computer chips. And those products have to sell in world markets. Clearly, the DRAMs that are produced by Micron, a large portion of those move into international markets to be applied to new technologies being developed in those markets that then again sell in the world market. Clearly, in my State, trade has expanded dramatically in the last several decades. But while the hi-tech economy has grown very well with a substantial amount of profitability, the agricultural economy has floundered. And while trade has been extremely beneficial in some areas, I would have to argue, as the Senator from Minnesota has, that in other areas it appears to have been less than fair and, in many instances, not fair at all. There is a bit of a classic struggle going on between the United States and Canada in our forest products industries, forest products industries that are in part supply, publicly owned in the sense that the timber comes from public lands. Whether it is the Federal lands of the U.S. Forest Service in the lower 48 and Alaska or whether it is crowned and provincial timber in Canada, the reality of placing values on those rough products as they move to the market is substantially different. Over the years we have fought mightily to create balance. But as a result of some of what we believed to be unfair practices between Canada and the United States, we have seen the rights of our policies go out and our men and women walk away with empty lunch pails while Canadians were aggressively logging and dumping in our markets. Just this year our President had to use trade remedy laws to stop the very process I have just defined. He stood up and he spoke out and he placed a tariff against Canadian lumber until such time as they can come back to the table and balance out with us a relationship and an agreement that does not put our men and women out of work and still allows them to work and still allows the beneficial reality of Canadian and U.S. sticks, 2 by 4s, being at the local lumberyard to build the homes of Americans. That is called balanced trade. That is called fair trade. The 201 process that brought about the investigation by our government, which was open and transparent, and that led our President to move is known as a trade remedy law passed by the U.S. Congress, passed by a majority vote out of this body--in other words, reflective of the constitutional responsibility of every Senator and every U.S. Member of Congress representing their States but, most importantly, taking an oath right there in that well to uphold the Constitution of the United States. The argument is simple and the argument has been made already today by the administration in a letter to all of our colleagues that fast track is simply a process and we make all of these proposals and we make all of these changes and all of them come back for a vote in this Chamber and they are correct--one vote, up or down. The problem occurs with the anticipation of the positives that will happen in an overall trade package once negotiated because they are never quite negotiated in a vacuum. The process goes on for years and years, as you have round after round and finally they conclude; there is a lot of attention and the world finally says, Oh, here it is, here is a trade package, a product of WTO, a product of aggressive negotiations, probably a product of the new round launched last year in Doha. The anticipation is so great and the public pressure is so great that when it gets to the well of the Senate and we see that substantive law has been changed and we would like to fix it, we cannot. We can vote against it, but the pressure by business, by industry, by the economy in general is you must pass this trade package. And we do. And we have consistently. As a result, some of us have had to vote no. I voted no against NAFTA. Why? Because of some environmental provisions in it and because of loopholes that I felt were in it, that an 18-wheeler truckload with Canadian grain could get through and into our markets were a reality, and they were and I voted against it, and time has proven that to be the case. But it has also proven one other thing--that Canadians are very good at enforcing laws at the border and we are very bad. But that was then. This is now. This administration is acting differently, and it is acting responsibly, and it led with the steel decision and it has now followed with the softwood lumber decision, and it is saying that it will effectively use a very transparent process to review the fairness or the lack of fairness in trade relationships and where it finds dumping it will move. And it has. I credit them for that. But what I am also saying, what the Senator from Minnesota is saying is that within the process itself, we can avoid some of the problems that have now been recorded over the last several decades if we would be allowed, on laws that we are proposing to be changed that might reduce the ability of the executive branch of our Government to enforce trade remedy laws, to say that they would apply to a point of order and a simple majority vote, the same vote it takes to pass the trade package that would be in the Chamber that they would be a part of. So I would say to any negotiator, if you are negotiating a package that cannot get 51 votes in this Chamber, and you are proposing changes in substantive law that might be required to get 51 votes, wherein lies the problem, especially if we are defending what I believe to be the very thing that the Senator from Minnesota has talked about--our constitutional responsibility and the sovereignty in doing that. Every administration and this administration protects with a vengeance its executive prerogatives, its executive authority, and we have seen this administration step up to that on at least two occasions in the last couple of years. That is what we are doing today--stepping up to what is, in fact, a legislative prerogative of the Constitution and why we think it is right that it be allowed to be a part of this package requiring a simple majority vote. What am I saying? The Dayton-Craig amendment is simply a point of order that would be part of it. That is, if a package comes to the floor and there are changes in trade remedy law--and in the current package that we are alleging we will know if they are there without even having to look because 90 days prior, under the law proposed, the negotiators would have to announce proposals of changes in the law. That is part of what came out of the House. That is part of what the Finance Committee, Chairman Baucus and Senator Grassley agreed on. And that is appropriate. It is appropriate that the legislative bodies of this constitutional Republic understand that changes in the laws that they have written are being proposed. What we are saying today is that there ought to be the next step and that next step is quite simple--to allow a simple majority vote of the constitutional officers of this body--us, U.S. Senators--to say whether those changes are right. Now, here is the next step, though: but to do so without dragging the whole trade package down. Not all trade packages are changes in our laws. They are expansions of authority. They are access to other markets. They are adjustments in other laws--ours and theirs, our trading partners. And so we are saying you do not bring down the whole package; there is good in trade and we know that. But what we are saying is that there is an authority and a responsibility that we should not abrogate or that we should not cast in such a way as to never be able to get there because the value of the whole appears to be so much greater and so important at that moment in time than the long-term constitutional responsibility of these Senators. So the Senators from Minnesota and Idaho, pass go, because the whole is so much more important than the parts. We are here today to tell you that the parts are darned important. They are constitutionally important. And now let me try to set another stage for you about the pressures involved. Our trade remedy process, countervailing duty, antidumping, 201 is transparent. It is a public process. If you, Mr. President, are a manufacturer in your State and you feel you are being dramatically harmed by a product coming in under a trade agreement, you have a course of action. Now, it takes a couple of years. It is open, it is public, and it will cost you money because you will have to get the attorneys and you will have to make the argument. If it is dramatic dumping and dramatic competition, you might be out of business before you get a remedy, but the remedy is still there and it is still open and it is still public. What we have tried to do and what our negotiators have tried to do since the Kennedy round forward is to convince other countries of the world to make their processes more transparent. Now, over time, there has been a shift. The shift has been away from their duties and away from their penalties toward antidumping provisions, not unlike ours. They are not transparent. Sometimes they are cast or administered in the dark of night. And so what our trading partners are telling our trade negotiators, or at least our trade negotiators believe, is that we have to get rid of what we have to cause them to get rid of what they are getting or they have got as it relates to trade remedy laws. In other words, we walk the plank first and maybe they will follow. In the meantime, what happens to the manufacturers and the workers? What happens to the economies of Idaho and Minnesota? Do they have to shift to the new paradigm? Do the old economies have to go away even though under a different day and a different scenario they were viable and productive? Well, I guess I am frustrated by it all. Let me talk about what happened in November of 2001 at Doha, Qatar, when our trade negotiators were involved in a round that we worked very hard to get, that was a product of the fallout of the very tragic round that occurred in Seattle, which basically fell apart as a result of national and international dissidents and disruption. In Doha this past November, our administration agreed to reopen negotiations on agreements of implementation of article 5 of the GATT--that is called on antidumping and countervailing duties--and on subsidies and countervailing pressures. The World Trade Organization had already ruled a number of times against our domestic trade remedy laws under these agreements and stated: the stated purpose of almost every other WTO member in securing these new negotiations is to further weaken U.S. trade law; in other words, further weaken the ability of the U.S. Government to protect its work force and its producers and its industries from what might be dumping, what might be clearly antitrade or unfair trade. The Japanese Government was elated by that action. They said: We are satisfied. This constitutes a major victory for their efforts to gut our trade laws. Those are the words of the Japanese economy, trade and industry minister. He said: ``We are 120 percent satisfied that that's where the Bush administration wants to go.'' The USTR sacrificed our antidumping and countervailing duty laws in order to get a new round of talks at the table--not yet; they simply put them on the table. Now, here is where I think the Senator from Minnesota and I agree and we also agree with our Trade Ambassador. There is nothing wrong with putting those issues on the table. When you are sitting at a negotiating table, everything ought to be negotiable, if the goal is to move from here to here and the benefits that will accrue as a result of that proposal are positive for our economies. So, our Trade Ambassador, put it on the table. But in putting it on the table, it is important that you recognize who made those laws and how we ultimately ought to address them. And what we are saying is, put them on the table; talk about them. See if there is a better way to get where we need to go in 2002 than there was in 1960. The world has changed dramatically. We understand that. We are willing to listen to it. Put it on the table. The laws we passed in 1960 may not apply today. But in putting it on the table, we are simply saying: And you bring back proposed changes in current law, not new law, in current trade remedy laws that are subject to a point of order. Why? Because this sovereign body created those laws. And the executive branch of government does not have a right to change them. And they don't. They only propose changes, but they do so in an environment that almost always assures that never will that vote occur. It is a rather simple approach. We are being told by the administration and by some in it that this destroys TPA. It has been editorialized that this is a bitter pill. Then the other day it was called a torpedo. Today, in what is a well-meaning but not totally accurate letter from the administration, they strongly opposed it. Let me go through the letter in the context of what I have just talked about, about the flexibility of negotiations. Before I do that, let me drop back a moment to something I think is important, and it is a frustration that our negotiators deal with when they are in the business of negotiating. I had the opportunity a couple of years ago to be part of an observer team at The Hague at a climate change conference. The head of the U.S. team of the Clinton administration that was there said at the beginning of that conference: We will not propose laws that will damage the economy of the United States. And he said: No agreement is better than a bad agreement. The conference began and the pressure built. During that time I had the opportunity to have a dialog with some of our counterparts from different Parliaments around the world. For the first time, I began to understand that they don't understand us. They didn't realize that a treaty negotiated by an administration and signed off on by an administration was not law until the Senate ratified it. Why? Well, if you are a member of a parliamentary body and you are elected and then you, if you are in the majority party, elect the Prime Minister out of that, that Prime Minister and the parliamentary body are, in essence, one. If that Prime Minister signs off on a treaty, it is law, unless the country doesn't like it. Then you hold a special election and get rid of the Prime Minister and the party. You get a new party and a new Prime Minister. That is how it works for a lot of countries in the world. It does not work that way here. Our Founding Fathers created a division of labor in our Constitution. I think it was quite a clear division. When I began to say: The Kyoto treaty is not law in our country, it is a proposed treaty the Senate of the United States has refused to consider, therefore, it is not law, therefore, our negotiators don't have to negotiate to it or for it, the European parliamentarians, didn't understand that, or at least they chose not to understand it. Of course, I was there as part of an observer team. I spent a lot of time encouraging the team not to make bad law, not to craft an agreement with which we couldn't live. Ultimately, they could not agree with the parliamentarians of Europe, and they came home. That is the reality of where we are at the moment. That is why it is important to understand the frustrations our trade ambassador has when he goes to the table and they say: Why can't you just negotiate something? That has been arguable, why we have wanted TPA or fast track over the years. It is why we originally gave it. But from the 1960s to 2002, the world and the economies of the world and the economies of this country and the economies of Idaho and the economies of Minnesota have changed dramatically in part because of trade, both positive and negative. I believe it is right and proper that we debate this issue today, that we don't sweep it under the rug, that we ask our colleagues to choose whether we ought to have a point of order and whether we ought to have a simple majority vote on the need to change the trade remedy laws of our country as proposed by the trade agreement that is on the floor at the time or if we should retain the existing law. In the letter sent this morning by the administration, they say that ``first and foremost, the amendment derails TPA without justification.'' I disagree with that. The Senator from Minnesota said it so well: An appointed bureaucrat is not an elected Senator. The oath of office we take to adhere to the Constitution is so clear and so simple and so important. We ought to be extremely cautious about delegating that constitutional responsibility to an unelected official. The trade ambassador would say: You don't do that. You ultimately get to vote on it. I think I have talked about the vote, the circumstances of the vote, the climate in which the vote is cast. That is why we are here today suggesting we make some subtle changes in the law. ``We have been committed not just to preserving U.S. trade laws but, more importantly, to using them.'' This is the administration talking in the letter. You are right; they have. And yet we are saying: we want to preserve them if it fits for you to use. They are saying, no, no; they can be negotiable or at least we want the right to negotiate. We are not denying that right. I have said it once. The Senator from Minnesota has said it. We are not denying the right of negotiation at all. If we are bright and clear and articulate in what we do, we will not sour the debate or the environment in which those negotiations occur because if I were a negotiator, I would say: You bet, we will talk about it. We will put it on the table. It will require a simple majority to pass. But then the whole agreement will. In all fairness to the administration, they recognize in the letter 41 Senators are a minority blocking this process. We offered to the administration yesterday that we would make some modification. They did not see fit to accept that. We went ahead. The Senator from Minnesota, when he offered the amendment this morning, modified it so it is not a two-thirds. It is a simple majority on the point of order, exactly the same vote it takes to pass the whole package. I believe that is a reasonable and right approach and a fair approach toward dealing with this issue. A minority ought not be allowed to block trade law or any law for that matter. We rule by a majority procedurally. We deal with supermajorities on occasion, and we have done it here on occasion, and with cloture and other issues to protect trade laws.

Mr. CRAIG. I am happy to respond.

Mr. CRAIG. It is that. I thought that was a right and reasonable approach. We should not ask for a supermajority on issues that can be passed or should be passed by a majority of the body. The Senator from Minnesota listened to those arguments, accepted those arguments today. I was pleased that his amendment could be modified for that purpose. In the administration's letter there is another argument. They say: Secondly, the amendment would jeopardize our current trade negotiations, especially the new global trade liberalization mandate launched in Doha last November. My reaction to that is, it does not. They go on to say: This is not a hypothetical observation. The failure to launch a global trade negotiation at Seattle in 1999 was due in significant part to a refusal even to discuss trade laws. Well, that was then. This is now. I have just said--the Senator from Minnesota has just said--discuss trade laws. Put them on the table. Look at the fact that they might need adjustment or change, that laws we have written in the 1960s might need some change. All we are saying is, when the package comes back, it will require, if a point of order is brought against a change that you have already reported to us, Mr. Ambassador, a 50-percent plus one of those present and voting. The conversation in Doha or the next round ought to go like this: While the Congress of the United States is giving us new expanded trade authority and negotiation authority, it also recognized the strong desire on the part of the citizens of our country to protect some process of trade remedy and trade remedy laws that are currently on the books of the United States. So any changes that we would make in them or propose to be made--and we are certainly willing to discuss those and talk about them, as we also want to talk about you, Spain, or you, France, or you, Germany, or somewhere else's trade laws--will be subject to the same vote as required for passage of the trade package. Instead of going with alarm, the ambassador ought to go with a very clear, matter-of-fact statement, and then roll up his sleeves and get at the business of negotiating in a way that I hope will help American agriculture and a lot of our industries. Trade remedy laws are not off limits. Those are the words used in the administration's letter today: Not off limits at all; available for full discussion, full debate, negotiation and change subject to a majority vote of the Senate. I think that is right, that is proper, and that is what we ought to be about. Their fourth argument was the WTO negotiations launched in Doha will not impair our ability to enforce U.S. trade laws. I think our explanation stands. If the ambassador brings back a package and in it there is substantive law change proposed and the dynamics of the package are such that the world and the economy of this country is saying pass it, pass it, pass it, there will be no opportunity because the law would not require, unless this amendment is adopted, us to make those adjustments if collectively the Congress of the United States felt the negotiators had gone beyond what we believe to be right and proper protection under those laws. (Mrs. CARNAHAN assumed the chair.)

Mr. CRAIG. I will be happy to yield.

Mr. CRAIG. The Senator from North Dakota has explained it very well, and that is the essence of this amendment. Again, a simple majority vote of this body will do so. Let me complete my comments. I have spoken long enough. There are others who wish to speak on this issue. I close by speaking to the second-degree amendment the Senator from Iowa has just proposed, and I hope at some time we appropriately will move to table that second-degree amendment. Let me tell my colleagues why. There is nothing in that amendment with which I disagree as part of process and procedure. You bet we should have talked about proposed substitutes and changes removed from, I call it the catchall title to the advanced title, to a higher priority as it relates to the direction we give our negotiators and ambassadors, the principles of negotiation and the objective of those principles. The second-degree amendment, though, takes away the point of order. It says, here is how you negotiate, but it does not deny the right of the Senate to speak. I hope at the appropriate time, early afternoon, we will offer a motion to table that amendment. I do believe we need a good straight up-or-down vote on the Dayton-Craig amendment. It is an important amendment. I yield the floor. I thank the Chair.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I rise today to submit a Sense of the Senate Resolution expressing support for Medicare Reform and the addition of a prescription drug benefit. I am pleased that Senator Thad Cochran and Senator James Inhofe are joining with me in this effort today. The Medicare program is of vital importance to our Nation's seniors and has been providing them dependable, affordable and high quality health care for over 35 years. Despite this, I think we would all agree that the system has not kept pace with modern medicine or coverage available to those covered by private insurance. The practice of medicine has changed dramatically since the inception of the Medicare program. The many new technologies and drugs that are available to our seniors today weren't even an option 35 years ago. No senior should have to worry about whether he or she can afford the medicine they need to stay healthy. I am well aware that the rising cost of prescription medicine and prescription drug coverage is a great concern for today's seniors and tomorrow's retires. Indeed, in some cases, prescription drugs are as important as a doctor's care. It is this reality that makes it so critical we focus our efforts on finding a solution. As discussion continues, it is crucial we develop effective options for simultaneously modernizing and securing Medicare. We can not afford to add an expensive new comprehensive benefit without real reform to the program and we need to focus our attention on the necessary steps to ensure Medicare remains dependable and up to date. This is why I am choosing to submit this Sense of the Senate Resolution expressing support for a prescription drug benefit and Medicare modernization. I am calling on the Senate to work to pass legislation on this issue before September 30, 2002 and to give current and future seniors the benefits they deserve. Included in this resolution are principles that I believe should be included in any Medicare or prescription drug legislation that passes this year. I hope my colleagues will join me in supporting these principles and working towards the goal of passing substantial Medicare reform.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. I am happy to yield.

Mr. CRAIG. Madam President, I am pleased my colleague from Minnesota, Senator Dayton, would speak to an amendment he and I have coauthored that has gained some concern in a variety of quarters as to the impact it might have on a trade promotion authority we might be able to pass out of the Senate. I think the Senator from Minnesota has spoken very clearly and articulately about the problems he and I and all States face--the frustration we have with blending domestic markets and international markets. I certainly am a strong advocate of trade. I always have been. At the same time, I want it to be balanced and I want it to be fair. When there are disadvantages--and we have just seen one that this administration has spoken to in an area that is of great concern to the Senator from Minnesota and myself, and that is in timber, where Canadians had a unique advantage and were dumping in our market, and we finally spoke up, stepped up, put a duty on, and said back off, let us see if we can find an agreement. It is only with the use of the tool of trade remedy that we are now able to get the Canadians to blink and to think about possibly coming to the table to craft a fair and equitable agreement. That is exactly what our amendment would do. Some would suggest, at least by rhetoric, it is a very damaging amendment to trade promotion authority. What I thought I would do is read a letter that 62 Members of the Senate signed and sent to the President on May 7 of last year, when in fact our trade representatives have been in Doha, Qatar, negotiating new trade agreements and the rest of the world said: You have to put your remedies on the table, you have to negotiate them down or away or we are not going to deal with you. What we are saying is bring it all to the table, talk about it. We believe that as the legislative branch of Government that crafts public policy, we ought to have a right at some point to be able to speak to it, instead of taking it all or take none of it, which is, of course, what happens under TPA or fast-track authority. Once a trade agreement is negotiated and if the executive branch of government in some way has negotiated down or altered trade remedy authority, and the package comes to the floor, then the pressure of the world is upon the Senate. Take it all or take none of it. Those are the only two options. Of course, the pressure is to take all of it because it is believed the advantages gained by these trade agreements are so powerful to the American economy--and in many instances they are--that we cannot deny it. Ultimately they pass, even though the administration, Democrat or Republican, may well have negotiated away some of our authority and our ability under the law. This is what we said to the President May 7: We are writing to state our strong opposition to any international trade agreement that would weaken U.S. trade laws, key U.S. trade laws including antidumping law, countervailing duty law. Section 201 and section 301 are critical elements in U.S. trade policy. A wide range of agricultural and industrial sectors have successfully employed these statutes to address trade problems. Unfortunately, experience suggests that many other industries are likely to have occasion to rely upon them in future years. Each of these laws is fully consistent with U.S. obligations under the World Trade Organization and other trade agreements. Moreover, these laws actually promote free trade by countering practices that both distort trade and are condemned by international trading rules. U.S. trade law provides American workers and industries the guarantee that if the United States pursues trade liberalization, it will also protect them against unfair foreign trade practices and allow time for them to address serious import surges. They are part of a political bargain struck with Congress and the American people under which the United States has pursued market opening agreements in the past. What does the Craig-Dayton/Dayton-Craig amendment do? It guarantees we can speak to that if those kinds of relaxations or changes in the laws come back to the Senate. And we can speak to it without dumping the entire trade agreement. I don't think we want to do that. Ours is to promote an ever- expanding, freer trading world market. At the same time, we do not want to disadvantage our own economy, destroy our own producers' capability, damage the workhorses of this country, all in pursuit of the idealism or the goal. We went on to say: Congress has made it clear its position on this matter. In draft fast-track consideration considered in 1997, both the House and Senate have included strong provisions directing trade negotiators not to weaken U.S. trade laws. Congress has restated this position in resolutions, letters, and through other matters. Unfortunately, some of our trading partners, many of which maintain serious unfair trade practices, continue to seek to weaken these laws. Why? They want access to the largest, richest consumer market in the world. They don't want us to force them to be fair, for them to be balanced, and for them to come in in a transparent negotiated environment. That is what we are asking. That is what this amendment requires. We went on to say: This may simply be postponing by those who oppose further market opening. But whatever the motive, the United States should no longer use its trade laws as bargaining chips in trade negotiations nor agree to any provision that weakens or undermines U.S. trade laws. Now, that is May 7, 2001; 62 Senators signed, Republican and Democrat. The amendment we bring to the floor, or hope we have the opportunity to bring to the floor, is supported equitably. We have 26 cosponsors, 13 Democrats and 13 Republicans. What do we do? We simply create a point of order that says if the administration changes trade remedy laws, they, by the current proposal, must notice us that they have done so, and in so doing they have to come back and fully defend it. If they can convince us, then we support it. If they cannot, then a point of order rests against it. Why? Because we are the ones who craft public policy. We will not deny or walk away from our constitutional right to do so. At the same time, we are fully willing to allow our negotiators to engage all of the rest of the trading countries of the world to bring any trade agreement with any proposed changes in it because ultimately it is our job in the Senate under our constitutional form of government to accept or deny that by ratification or by voting it down.

Mr. CRAIG. I don't know how anyone serving the Senate, which is for an expanding economy, for greater revenues, for workers and for producers--and of course we will tax a little of that--would be against trade. Clearly, the future of our economy is trading in a world market. I have watched my State of Idaho grow from an agrarian economy of agriculture, timber and mining, to a very diverse economy today of electronics, the high-tech industry, and food processing. Almost half of everything an Idaho worker produces has to sell on the world market to be profitable, to allow that person his or her job and to continue the success of that company. That is also true in Minnesota. It is also true everywhere else in the country. What the Senator is saying and what I am saying is, in the case of Canada and softwood lumber--and they have a distinct advantage and dump in our markets, putting our people out of work--we say, wait a minute, stop; balance this field out a little bit and create fair trade by that kind of balance. That is what our amendment allows--a balancing of the process. What is most important that our amendment allows us, as policymakers, is a right to have a voice in that process. Not the take- it-or-leave-it strategy that doesn't work in the end. I wanted to vote for NAFTA. I voted against NAFTA. Why? Extraneous environmental, extraneous labor agreements that should not have been part of a trade agreement. It had no choice. There was no flexibility. Take it or leave it. Instead of working to create a balanced economic environment that would have allowed freer but fair and balanced trade across the Mexican and Canadian border, we did not have that opening. That is an opening we ought to have. What I do not want to deny, and I think the Senator from Minnesota agrees, I don't want to deny our negotiators from going to the table and being able to negotiate any agreement. They ought to have the full freedom and flexibility to put anything and everything on the table and to bring anything and everything back to us. In the end, under our constitutional form of government, we are the ones who have to make the decision. They are the ones who negotiate. That is the kind of balance that I think is important.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Madam President, we are in morning business, are we not?

Mr. CRAIG. I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak for 15 minutes.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I thank the ranking member of the authorizing Agriculture Committee, Senator Lugar, for yielding time, and the flexibility offered to me by the assistant majority leader to speak to this conference report. I have for the last few moments been listening to the senior Senator from Indiana talk about his frustrations and problems with this conference report and with agricultural policy. I must say I agree with so much of what he said. When one is handed a political document and they try to fix it, and the politics gets worse, the document ultimately does not get better. Tragically enough, that is what we were handed in the Senate in the bill coming out of the Senate Agriculture Committee. We tried to make it better. It was not much better before it went to conference, and I am not sure what we now have is a much improved version. I say that not only as a student of agricultural policy, once having served on the authorizing committee, but now serving on the Agriculture Appropriations Committee, growing up a farmer and a rancher, being active as an agricultural young person in FFA, both as a State officer and a national vice president, I have been involved and closely connected to agriculture in my State and around this country for a long while. As someone who recognizes the importance of agriculture to my State and good farm policy, I am in a quandary, as are many of my colleagues who have come to speak over the last several days to the issue of a new 5-year agricultural policy for our country. How do I evaluate this in the context of how will it impact my State, primarily, and then secondarily, what does it do to the country, both to the producers of agriculture, the farmer, the rancher, but what about the consumer? How does it fit in the consumer market basket? How do we put all of that together because that really is the charge of the Congress when they evaluate agricultural policy? It is with those thoughts in mind that I joined with Senator Roberts some weeks ago on the very thing Senator Lugar was talking about a few moments ago, and that is the opportunity of a supplemental to send a message to production agriculture, as the tractors are ready to go into the fields across America, that there was a policy in place, that we were not going to play politics with it and that they could take something to the bank to negotiate with the loan officer on a line of credit for the farming year. Senator Roberts introduced that legislation a couple of weeks ago, as the conference committee was pushing toward finality. We now have that in this document, in this conference report. The question is, What does it mean? What is its impact? How long does it take to reach regulatory form in a way that gets to the ground? We will live out this year's farm policy because it does not expire until the end of the fiscal year. It is possible, while I think some will meet it with resistance, that we will see a supplemental on the floor to solve some of the immediate problems because this bill does not deliver immediate aid to American agriculture. It spreads it out over an extended period of time when, in past policy and in current policy today, they would have received some immediate assistance. This does not solve a problem in the short term. Then, again, farm policy is more about the long-term view as we deal with the day-to-day problems of agriculture, in policy but also with the supplemental. How do I evaluate this farm bill? Let me state what is bad. That is how I looked at it--what is bad, what is good, how do I balance it out, how do I vote for Idaho farmers and ranchers. Idaho is one of the fastest growing dairy States in the Nation. We rank fifth in overall numbers of cows producing. It is a growth area in Idaho agriculture, and our dairies are 500-, 1,500-, 2,000-cow units. We are one of the big growth dairy States. Frankly, policies that access markets and open up markets are the best policies for Idaho. We are an exporter. We do not have to be in the business of subsidizing an efficiency for the sake of the politics of the local dairy environment. Our farmers have transitioned into a much more competitive situation in modernizing themselves to fit the needs of the current consumer base. When I look at a national milk program that basically only subsidizes or helps build a floor for cow units of 170 cows or fewer, my guess is that is talking about what used to be when it comes to dairy policy instead of what ought to be. That is not good policy because it perpetuates relative inefficiency or it subsidizes it in a way we ought not be about. We have always been proud in American agriculture that efficiency was the name of our game. Our production set us apart from the rest of the world. We ought not be about subsidizing something that is not efficient today. We ought to promote efficiency and productivity. I don't think dairy policy does that. If we really want to help out the bottom line of our Nation's dairy men and women, it would be much more advantageous to look at alternatives to this bill's price support program, which is purposely biased to a select dairy operation size. What about forestry? Yes, when we talk agriculture, we talk forestry. One of the largest divisions of the U.S. Department of Agriculture is the U.S. Forest Service. It is tremendously disappointing to see the biomass and stewardship provisions stripped from this farm bill. Why can't we get involved in the business of actively managing our forests instead of simply letting them grow old, die, and burn up? Right now, forests are burning in Arizona and New Mexico. It is a dry year. Part of the reason they are burning is that we have had no active management and we have watched the fuel base of those forests build. That is true in the Black Hills, an area not far from the chairman's home area. It is critically important we actively manage our forests instead of putting the fence around them and saying to the environmental community: Here is a preserve. Come look at it while it is alive because it is dying unless we create dynamics in it that will build back life and vitality. We did not do that. We walked away from that. The House and the Senate could not agree. We will do what we have been doing for the last several years: We will legislate through appropriations. That is not necessarily a way to create policy, but that is probably what we will end up doing because this was the wrong way to do it. The Senator from Iowa and I and others got involved with the assistant majority leader in an issue over water when he was trying to take States' water rights and reshape them and create water banks, denying Western States their prerogative on western water rights. We were able to get a big chunk of that knocked out. But then Nevada got a sweet deal, a couple hundred million dollars to go to a specific area in Nevada. That is the name of the game around here. At least we saved water rights. Water rights cannot be bought, nor should they be owned, by the Federal Government. They ought to have a right to have rights where water is needed and water is utilized. But in western arid States, that is a provision that is exclusively the States'. In my opinion, those are some of the bad provisions in this bill. Now let me talk about some of the good provisions because there are some. I have been on the floor numerous times in the last good number of years talking about sugar and the sugar program. It is an important part of the agricultural base of my State. We got the forfeiture penalty eliminated. That was critically necessary. With the sugar policy, we are moving back to a no-cost-to-the-taxpayer approach. That is good. That is the right way to move policy. We have done so for sugar. We included wool in a marketing loan and an LDP program. As we know, and especially with western range sheep industries and with wool, that market has all but collapsed as a result of imports and as a result of access by Australian and New Zealand interests in this market. This helps create flexibility and staying power on the part of the sheep rancher of our country--the sheep farmer. I think that is important. In my State, there is a class of crops called pulse crops, peas and lentils. Those are a valuable rotation crop, especially in the high- grain-yielding country where they have 120-bushel dryland grain. It is a marvelous producing crop in the north end of my State that moves into Washington. One way to maintain the integrity of the soil and the balances to plant lagoons is nitrogen-bearing crops that put humus back in the soil and create the dynamics of a positive farm program, and yet those crops have been without a loan program or LDP all these years. We were able to create those dynamics in this farm bill. That is a positive provision. Another positive part of the program is the conservation title. It includes the EQIP funding and the CRP acreage. Certainly in my State, CRP has been a very dynamic program, creating the kind of conservation and soil management in some of our more steep grounds, some of our foothill country, that not only has put that country back to grass, it has created great wildlife habitat for upland game birds--an extremely positive program. Another area of the conservation title is the Grasslands Reserve Program for 2 million acres of pasture lands. I helped write that provision. I introduced legislation with several colleagues. It is possible the chairman was involved in that issue. We have worked together to create the Grasslands Reserve Program. There are positive conservation titles in that farm bill. That is one of the good things I see in this bill. As to rural economic development, many Members, as we argue for a farm bill, in part argue to create profitability in agriculture because of the dynamic and dramatic negative economics in many of the rural areas of our States. While we know that at least the number of farmers is dropping even though the number of acres farmed remains the same, it changes the dynamics in small rural, agricultural America. As a result, many have worked over the years to create new dynamics for the purpose of economic development in rural America. This is a title of importance. It is important we do so. The funding is reduced. The title is stronger. Over the years, I hope we can build back some of that funding to strengthen rural economic development. If new industry is to come to rural America, then the infrastructure overall in America has to remain whole. I have worked on and have a new rural health care title that will allow our rural hospitals low-cost loans to buy back some of the equipment that is now obsolete. I was visiting a hospital in Soda Springs, in the southeastern corner of my State. It is a rural area. Much of that equipment is 25 and 30 years old in that hospital. You cannot call it state of the art, even though they deliver quality health care. That is a hospital 30 miles from the next hospital, in which rural health care is critically necessary. This legislation in the long term will help us. My time is rapidly running short. I know others wish to speak as we near the hour we will vote on this issue. Overall, this is not the farm bill I would have written. My guess is, we are going to be back rewriting it more than once over the course of the next several years. Somebody said: Why aren't you on the authorizing committee anymore, Senator, and therefore on agriculture appropriations? Because, I said, my guess is we are going to be rewriting this farm bill at least once a year for the next 5, and that will be done in the Appropriations agriculture subcommittee as we work on these programs. This is an expensive farm bill. My guess is in the end we will find we cannot afford it all and we will begin to adjust some of this downward--and I think that is appropriate. We are on the verge of busting the budget on which we earlier agreed, but then, again, without a budget resolution and without a fixed application of where we are going with agriculture, it is possible to argue that this bill doesn't meet that test. In the end, I am going to support the conference report. I think the farmers of my State in the majority want that to happen. There are provisions in this bill that I can support and I have outlined the positives and the negatives. I hope we can pass this out and in the end the President will sign it, although I know the White House and the Department of Agriculture and the Secretary are very frustrated over where this Congress wants to take agricultural policy at this moment. Sometimes compromises are not necessarily good. Tragically, in the end, even in bipartisan environments, at times we do not always work the will that ought to be worked to produce the kind of positives and the dynamics we ought to in the marketplace. I am as frustrated today as any other agricultural Senator is about prices, commodities, international markets, and the viability of the agricultural economy of our country. I do not deny where we are heading, with larger agriculture and all we are attempting to do to resolve those problems. As a result of that, we have a conference report that I hope a majority of the Senate will move in favor of, and therefore pass this conference report out and send it to the President's desk. I yield the floor.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, the bill I am introducing today represents a significant modification to S. 1320, which I introduced in the last Congress. This modification represents a large body of work that reflects my belief that forest planning and public land management continues to evolve and that underlaying law needs to be updated. It is also represents thousands of hours of hearings and working with a variety of interests to modernize the laws governing our stewardship over federally-managed, multiple-use lands. I first undertook an effort to improve our National Forest lands' forest planning process in the 104th Congress with the introduction of S. 1253. I then refined that effort when I reintroduced the legislation in S. 1320. Today, I am introducing legislation that represents a refinement of earlier efforts in S. 1253 and S. 1320. For those of you who have just tuned in, this bill is the result of 15 oversight hearings that my Subcommittee on Forests and Public Land Management held during the 104th Congress. These hearings involved more than 200 witnesses, representing all points of view, and reviewing all aspects of the management of the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands. The overwhelming conclusion from all of these witnesses, developers and environmentalists alike, public and private sector employees alike, was that the statutes governing federal land management, the 1976 Federal Land Policy and Management Act and the 1976 National Forest Management Act, are antiquated, and in need of updating. These statutes were passed by Congress in the mid-1970s to help solve land management problems. Today, they are a large part of the problem. It also represents my continued frustration with the process paralysis that grips the planning and implementation of much needed land management activities on our National Forests. Our new Chief of the Forest Service, Dale Bosworth, tells me that it now takes up to ten years to produce a forest plan that has a life expectancy of 15 years. We have seen example after example of projects that require three to five years to plan. In the case of many fire rehabilitation projects, the financial viability of the project demands that NEPA be completed in a matter of months, not years. More importantly, we are spending months and sometimes years planning and documenting the need for the rehabilitation of these burned areas, and then failing to get the land management underway before natural events over take the health of our forests. This is occurring to the detriment of the environment. While our current forest planning and project planning processes stumble along, delaying important rehabilitation work, these burned areas are assailed by the elements of wind and rain. Almost every single person heard from agrees that the planning and environmental documentation process are broken. If we leave the agency in utter gridlock, we have done nothing to protect the environment. If during all of our careful planning and environmental documentation, an area suffers a series of thunder storms that washes thousands of tons of soil into critical fish habitats, as occurred after the 1990 fires on the Bitteroot National Forest, we and our system have failed the forests, the environment, and the American Public. By imposing a cumbersome, if not impossible, planning process on our federal land managers we guarantee more fires, more destruction of critical wildlife habitats, more water and air pollution, and the increased likelihood of dangerous and destructive catastrophic fires. We do nothing good for the environment by spending two or three years to design, document, and plan salvage operations to halt the spread of insects or disease as they rampage through our forests. We can see this today in the Red River drainage of the Nez Perce National Forest. I look at laws as ``tools'' for use by professional land managers and resource scientists that help them to establish priorities and make management decisions. These tools are as antiquated as the slide-rule and computer punch cards that were the tools used by land managers at the time that these statutes were passed. As a consequence of oversight review during the 104th Congress, and subsequent oversight hearings, I drafted and circulated S. 1253 at the outset of the 105th Congress. That draft, and the subsequently- introduced bill were, in turn, the subject of six informal workshops and another eight legislative hearings to review the concepts embodied in both the first draft and the introduced version of S. 1253. The ideas that emanated from the oversight hearings were modified to reflect the suggestions of witnesses, and in recognition of how resource management problems have subsequently evolved. A similar review was conducted upon the introduction of S. 1320 which has helped me improve upon my previous efforts. As you know I continued to hold hearings during both the 106th and the beginning of the 107th Congress and enjoyed additional dialogue about how to best modify the 1976 statutes. For instance, at one hearing all four of the former Chiefs of the Forest Service and one former Bureau of Land Management Director shared their views about the current state of Federal land management, and where legislative action could assist their successors in discharging the public trust more effectively. During that time period there was at least one seminal decision from the Supreme Court. In Ohio Forestry Association versus Glickman, the Supreme Court, in my view, clarified the interrelationship between forest plans and project level decisions. In that decision, the Court denied standing to challenge resource management plans, essentially on the basis that no real decisions were made. We now have several years of court rulings that reflect that ruling. And we believe that the Forest Service will soon be proposing forest planning regulations that will reflect the process certified by the Supreme Court. The bill I am introducing today would refine current planning law, rather than rewrite the law to alter our course. I believe this bill is more of a refinement than a revision and that it will be complementary to what we hope to see in the Forest Service's new forest planning rules, rather than in conflict with those rules. In various other ways of a less significant nature, the bill I am introducing today also reflects the product of court decisions that have been rendered during the period that we were reviewing these issues. In many ways my frustration with the forest planning and project planning process that our Federal land managers are saddled with, is a lot like the Hubble Telescope when it was first launched into space in 1990. You'll recall that initially the Hubble telescope didn't work. The pictures it sent back were fuzzy and useless. It had a design flaw, a mirror was not ground correctly and as a result its images were unclear. NASA has spent millions of dollars to design and launch this marvel of technology and it didn't work. Our National Forest planning process, the result of the 1979 Federal Land Policy and Management Act, the 1976 National Forest Management Act and subsequent Federal regulations, is broken. It has cost the public several hundred million dollars, and we continue to get fuzzy images of what the solution should be. The problem is that the public and land managers do not believe or trust the results. Now we learn we are spending up to ten years to complete plans that will remain in place for only 15 years. In the case of the Hubble Telescope, NASA identified the problem, designed a fix, and went into space and corrected the problem, all within a very short 3 year time period. In the case of the forest planning process, most undertook the regulations would need periodic updating. During the late 1980's and early 1990's the Forest Service worked to develop and propose new forest planning regulations. Election year politics prevented the agency from finalizing those regulations. In the last two years of the Clinton years, the Forest Service again made an effort to make changes to its planning regulations. Again election year politics intervened and now the current Administration is working toward some changes. The bottom line here is that we can repolish the regulations over and over again but it still produces fuzzy pictures. It is my estimation that it is time to make some changes to the underlying law, so to speak the design of our telescope. It is time to make the changes our Federal managers need to assure reasonable, environmentally sound, and timely land management. It is my hope that we will now move forward with additional hearings on this proposal, confident that we are on the correct path to improve the quality of Federal land management, and through a variety of means, increase public support for the future management of our Federal forest lands. I look forward to working with Senator Wyden, the chairman for the Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests, and to hold hearings to further refine this regulation. It is my hope that Senator Wyden and I can build on our efforts to end the Federal forest grid-lock that we started with the passage of Secure Rural Schools and Community Self- Determination Act of 1999. I invite both the administration and Members on both sides of the aisle to join us in this effort. We will move forward knowing that this proposal, like any other, is a working draft that will by necessity change, probably significantly. We also move forward knowing that legislative change in this arena is both inevitable and vital. It is clear to me that this area of public discourse vitally needs a vibrant legislative debate and a new legislative charter so that our Federal land managers can be provided with tools a little more modern that the slide-rule and maniframe computer punch cards.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, the bill I am introducing today represents a significant modification to S. 1320, which I introduced in the last Congress. This modification represents a large body of work that reflects my belief that forest planning and public land management continues to evolve and that underlaying law needs to be updated. It is also represents thousands of hours of hearings and working with a variety of interests to modernize the laws governing our stewardship over federally-managed, multiple-use lands. I first undertook an effort to improve our National Forest lands' forest planning process in the 104th Congress with the introduction of S. 1253. I then refined that effort when I reintroduced the legislation in S. 1320. Today, I am introducing legislation that represents a refinement of earlier efforts in S. 1253 and S. 1320. For those of you who have just tuned in, this bill is the result of 15 oversight hearings that my Subcommittee on Forests and Public Land Management held during the 104th Congress. These hearings involved more than 200 witnesses, representing all points of view, and reviewing all aspects of the management of the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands. The overwhelming conclusion from all of these witnesses, developers and environmentalists alike, public and private sector employees alike, was that the statutes governing federal land management, the 1976 Federal Land Policy and Management Act and the 1976 National Forest Management Act, are antiquated, and in need of updating. These statutes were passed by Congress in the mid-1970s to help solve land management problems. Today, they are a large part of the problem. It also represents my continued frustration with the process paralysis that grips the planning and implementation of much needed land management activities on our National Forests. Our new Chief of the Forest Service, Dale Bosworth, tells me that it now takes up to ten years to produce a forest plan that has a life expectancy of 15 years. We have seen example after example of projects that require three to five years to plan. In the case of many fire rehabilitation projects, the financial viability of the project demands that NEPA be completed in a matter of months, not years. More importantly, we are spending months and sometimes years planning and documenting the need for the rehabilitation of these burned areas, and then failing to get the land management underway before natural events over take the health of our forests. This is occurring to the detriment of the environment. While our current forest planning and project planning processes stumble along, delaying important rehabilitation work, these burned areas are assailed by the elements of wind and rain. Almost every single person heard from agrees that the planning and environmental documentation process are broken. If we leave the agency in utter gridlock, we have done nothing to protect the environment. If during all of our careful planning and environmental documentation, an area suffers a series of thunder storms that washes thousands of tons of soil into critical fish habitats, as occurred after the 1990 fires on the Bitteroot National Forest, we and our system have failed the forests, the environment, and the American Public. By imposing a cumbersome, if not impossible, planning process on our federal land managers we guarantee more fires, more destruction of critical wildlife habitats, more water and air pollution, and the increased likelihood of dangerous and destructive catastrophic fires. We do nothing good for the environment by spending two or three years to design, document, and plan salvage operations to halt the spread of insects or disease as they rampage through our forests. We can see this today in the Red River drainage of the Nez Perce National Forest. I look at laws as ``tools'' for use by professional land managers and resource scientists that help them to establish priorities and make management decisions. These tools are as antiquated as the slide-rule and computer punch cards that were the tools used by land managers at the time that these statutes were passed. As a consequence of oversight review during the 104th Congress, and subsequent oversight hearings, I drafted and circulated S. 1253 at the outset of the 105th Congress. That draft, and the subsequently- introduced bill were, in turn, the subject of six informal workshops and another eight legislative hearings to review the concepts embodied in both the first draft and the introduced version of S. 1253. The ideas that emanated from the oversight hearings were modified to reflect the suggestions of witnesses, and in recognition of how resource management problems have subsequently evolved. A similar review was conducted upon the introduction of S. 1320 which has helped me improve upon my previous efforts. As you know I continued to hold hearings during both the 106th and the beginning of the 107th Congress and enjoyed additional dialogue about how to best modify the 1976 statutes. For instance, at one hearing all four of the former Chiefs of the Forest Service and one former Bureau of Land Management Director shared their views about the current state of Federal land management, and where legislative action could assist their successors in discharging the public trust more effectively. During that time period there was at least one seminal decision from the Supreme Court. In Ohio Forestry Association versus Glickman, the Supreme Court, in my view, clarified the interrelationship between forest plans and project level decisions. In that decision, the Court denied standing to challenge resource management plans, essentially on the basis that no real decisions were made. We now have several years of court rulings that reflect that ruling. And we believe that the Forest Service will soon be proposing forest planning regulations that will reflect the process certified by the Supreme Court. The bill I am introducing today would refine current planning law, rather than rewrite the law to alter our course. I believe this bill is more of a refinement than a revision and that it will be complementary to what we hope to see in the Forest Service's new forest planning rules, rather than in conflict with those rules. In various other ways of a less significant nature, the bill I am introducing today also reflects the product of court decisions that have been rendered during the period that we were reviewing these issues. In many ways my frustration with the forest planning and project planning process that our Federal land managers are saddled with, is a lot like the Hubble Telescope when it was first launched into space in 1990. You'll recall that initially the Hubble telescope didn't work. The pictures it sent back were fuzzy and useless. It had a design flaw, a mirror was not ground correctly and as a result its images were unclear. NASA has spent millions of dollars to design and launch this marvel of technology and it didn't work. Our National Forest planning process, the result of the 1979 Federal Land Policy and Management Act, the 1976 National Forest Management Act and subsequent Federal regulations, is broken. It has cost the public several hundred million dollars, and we continue to get fuzzy images of what the solution should be. The problem is that the public and land managers do not believe or trust the results. Now we learn we are spending up to ten years to complete plans that will remain in place for only 15 years. In the case of the Hubble Telescope, NASA identified the problem, designed a fix, and went into space and corrected the problem, all within a very short 3 year time period. In the case of the forest planning process, most undertook the regulations would need periodic updating. During the late 1980's and early 1990's the Forest Service worked to develop and propose new forest planning regulations. Election year politics prevented the agency from finalizing those regulations. In the last two years of the Clinton years, the Forest Service again made an effort to make changes to its planning regulations. Again election year politics intervened and now the current Administration is working toward some changes. The bottom line here is that we can repolish the regulations over and over again but it still produces fuzzy pictures. It is my estimation that it is time to make some changes to the underlying law, so to speak the design of our telescope. It is time to make the changes our Federal managers need to assure reasonable, environmentally sound, and timely land management. It is my hope that we will now move forward with additional hearings on this proposal, confident that we are on the correct path to improve the quality of Federal land management, and through a variety of means, increase public support for the future management of our Federal forest lands. I look forward to working with Senator Wyden, the chairman for the Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests, and to hold hearings to further refine this regulation. It is my hope that Senator Wyden and I can build on our efforts to end the Federal forest grid-lock that we started with the passage of Secure Rural Schools and Community Self- Determination Act of 1999. I invite both the administration and Members on both sides of the aisle to join us in this effort. We will move forward knowing that this proposal, like any other, is a working draft that will by necessity change, probably significantly. We also move forward knowing that legislative change in this arena is both inevitable and vital. It is clear to me that this area of public discourse vitally needs a vibrant legislative debate and a new legislative charter so that our Federal land managers can be provided with tools a little more modern that the slide-rule and maniframe computer punch cards.